While central Grove real estate and restaurants seem to founder, the mother-and-daughter team at Asian Thai Kitchen turns out fragrant bowls of noodles and rich coconut milk curries without even a place for patrons to sit.

Shrimp pad see-ew ($13)

Photo by Zachary Fagenson

After a first bite of a spicy, fragrant panang curry ($11), trying the rest of the options quickly tops to-do lists. The orange-red sauce is rich with the earthy, citrusy flavor of lemongrass and an earthy, not-to-sweet coconut milk.

The wide rice noodles of pad see-ew ($13) are coated with just the right amount of a smoky, salty, sweet dark soy sauce. The shrimp are perfectly cooked, and each bite sets off a full mouth burn that should come with most Thai meals.

"We have two kinds of spicy here," KT says with a laugh, "American spicy and Thai spicy."

Asian Thai Kitchen opened about a year ago after a string of sandwich and pizza vendors unsuccessfully tried to set up inside the store.

The remains of the space's former tenants, including beloved 27th Avenue pizza joint Slice 'N Ice, which closed more than a year ago, are stacked like a burial mound in the back of the store next to humming coolers of Gatorade and Monster Energy Drink.

KT, who was raised in Bangkok, said she came across the listing for the space on Craigslist and jumped for it.

"No one else was doing Thai in the Grove," she says. "There was low competition."

Waiting at Asian Thai Kitchen. Funions not recommended.

Photo by Zachary Fagenson

This is her third year in the States. The first was spent waiting tables at the seemingly endless array of Thai-Japanese restaurants throughout Miami. The second was in the kitchen at Siam Oishi in the Grove.

She learned cooking from her mother, who arrived in the U.S. two months ago and has been helping in the Grove location and the one that opened on Calle Ocho near 22nd Avenue about seven months ago.

"Everyone loved her cooking," KT says. "She was a teacher for 11- and 12-year-old students for almost 40 years, and she would always cook for them at lunch or at holidays and festivals."

Zachary Fagenson entered the professional food world at 5:30 a.m. some time in the mid-1990s. He was 12. The place was called Bagel Boys. It was your archetypal suburban New York spot where he would help boil the day’s bagels (something like 2,000) before several hours of slicing and shmearing. Jobs in restaurants waiting tables, running food, and working kitchen prep filled the following dozen years. Zach attended the George Washington University before graduating from the University of South Florida in 2008. He became the New Times Broward-Palm Beach restaurant critic in 2012 before taking up the post for Miami in 2014. He has a penchant for Asian cuisine and its marriage of savory, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors. That blessed union can be found in Central American cuisine. When he’s not stiffening his arteries for South Florida’s greater good — and rest assured, food can be a powerful force in a city’s development — he works as a correspondent for Reuters, Politico, and Agence France-Presse.